The Stellar Death Plan (Masters of Space Book 1)

by Robert E. Vardeman

  “They convicted me, but — ”

  She silenced him with her lips. Her lush body crushed against his. Kinsolving started to push her away and then stopped. When Lark broke off the kiss, her face flushed blues and greens.

  “You are dangerous,” she said breathlessly. “This is going to be fun!”

  “The aliens in orbit. What did they tell you?”

  “This is some sort of prison colony. A Botany Bay. You know Earth history, don’t you? Of course you do. You’re from Earth.” Her hand roved over his chest, his belly, lower. “Oh, yes, you’re human. Very, very human.”

  “Lark, please. They might try to keep us here, to stop us from leaving.”

  “They wouldn’t dare! Daddy’d never permit it.”

  “The ship’s engines. Show me what’s wrong with them.”

  “Oh, you think those ugly things in orbit might try to stop us? This is going to be great fun!” She grabbed his grimy hand and led him through the ship’s narrow corridors to a work panel near the sealed engine room. Lark pointed to a single large red warning light.

  Kinsolving had no immediate idea what might have malfunctioned in the engine. He’d always heard that the precision machines functioned flawlessly — or blew up. Seldom did a starship manage to limp into drydock to be repaired. It just wasn’t the nature of hyperspace flight to allow even minor accidents.

  “Where’s the computer console?” he asked. Kinsolving looked around, trying to find operating instructions.

  “Computer? Oh, it must be here somewhere. They put them all over the ship. So confusing, don’t you agree? Let me try this one.” Lark toggled a switch on the bulkhead.

  A high-pitched, stilted alien voice echoed over a speaker. “You will not leave this world. You will remain where you are or your vessel will be destroyed. Respond or we will consider you a renegade and open fire.”

  Kinsolving and Lark stared at each other, his dark eyes locking into her light blue ones.

  “Do you think they really mean it?” she asked in a tiny voice.

  An answer to her question came with stunning suddenness. The ship rocked from side to side on its hydraulic jacks as the aliens in orbit opened laser fire.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Barton Kinsolving hit the button to cycle shut all air locks. The searing impact of the plasma against the side of the ship rocked the speedster on its jacks.

  “Why are they doing this?” Lark Versalles asked innocently. “I haven’t done anything.”

  “Not yet, you haven’t,” Kinsolving said. “But you will.”

  “I will?” she said, almost happily. “This is becoming more photonic by the second. What am I going to do?”

  “Help a convict escape.” Kinsolving staggered and went to his knees. A laser blast raked the side of the ship. The gunners in orbit had found their range.

  “They weren’t lying,” she said. “You are a criminal. How exciting!”

  Sweat poured down Kinsolving’s face. He looked over the control console for the hyperspace engines. He knew nothing about such mechanisms, but he was an engineer, a good one, and his life depended on fixing the engine and getting into space.

  “What happened? When the engines died on you?”

  “Nothing. I was just trying to get a message through to Dinky and — ”

  “A message?” Kinsolving demanded, cutting her off. “What do you mean?”

  “I turned on the com-unit and powered up to contact Dinky. He’s back on Earth — just getting ready to leave, actually — so I made sure the power level was at max.”

  “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that you can’t make radio contact through hyperspace? That it’ll overload the engines?”

  “Oh, I suppose they have,” Lark said. The dyes under her cheeks turned a light pink, then suffused with pastel blues and greens. “Everyone’s always telling me I can’t do this and I can’t do that. They’re wrong, mostly.”

  “Not this time,” Kinsolving said, hurrying now. Two more laser strikes rocked the ship. “There’s infinite drain if you’re in hyperspace and try to use the radio. I’m no physicist and don’t know why. Usually there are cutoffs to protect the circuits. Here!”

  He pulled off the panel covering and found a smaller board with a trio of toggle switches, all in the Off position. Kinsolving flipped them to On. Power hummed deep in the innards of the speedster’s sealed stardrive engine.

  “Why, you’re a genius. You fixed it!”

  “What did the guards in orbit tell you?”

  “Oh, the usual warnings. Don’t land, don’t do this and that. They didn’t say they’d fire on me. Not exactly.”

  Kinsolving rushed to the cockpit, Lark trailing behind and protesting that she didn’t like being ignored. Kinsolving dropped into the comfortable acceleration couch and stared at the controls. Red lights danced, each showing an onboard failure from the laser barrage. But he had no trouble locating the launch sequencer. The elegant starship had been equipped with only the finest.

  “Wait, don’t!” cried Lark.

  Kinsolving didn’t hesitate. The timer gave less than five seconds before launch. Kinsolving found himself crushed in the couch, pinned by not only his own increased weight but also by Lark Versalles’. The woman had stumbled and fallen across him when the rockets ignited. Kinsolving struggled to pull her into the couch alongside. He managed to get her squarely on top of him.

  The dye patterns writhing just under the woman’s translucent skin turned paler and paler as the strain of launch acceleration mounted, but Lark managed to lift her head and peer down into Kinsolving’s face.

  “Never done this before. This is fun!”

  Her mouth crushed hard against his, both passion and acceleration bruising his lips. Kinsolving struggled but Lark held the high ground and controlled him until the rockets died suddenly.

  She cried out in surprise, floating up and off, weightless. “We’re in orbit already! That was over too soon!”

  “Not too soon,” muttered Kinsolving. “Just in time.” He worked his way across the control panel, seeing that the fuel for the emergency rockets had been fully expended. There wouldn’t be any maneuvering using steering jets, not now. But he didn’t intend docking or even staying in orbit long enough to need them.

  “Intruder starship,” blared the speaker. “You will cease all attempt to leave this planet. You will be destroyed instantly if you attempt escape.”

  “Do they mean it?” Lark asked, one slender leg curled around a stanchion. “They did fire at us with their lasers, though they weren’t good shots.”

  “Good enough,” said Kinsolving. “Several external sensors are blown out.” His fingers worked faster now.

  “What are you doing?” she cried. “You’re preparing for star shift. You can’t do that!”

  “Why not?”

  “But we don’t have time to compute a destination. You’re launching at random. And they did warn us.”

  “They can’t have us in their sights or they’d have vaporized us instantly. That’s a bluff. They have to fire their lasers directly through the planet’s atmosphere,” he said, checking relative locations of speedster and space station. “Too much beam attenuation to do real damage — for another few minutes.”

  “You’d just go?” Lark asked, amazed at the concept.

  “What’s wrong with that? You want excitement, don’t you?”

  “Oh, yes!”

  “Then that’s what I’ll furnish. Lost among the stars. A random destination. Think of the romance in that.”

  “A friend of mine was lost for six years,” Lark said, dubious of the adventure Kinsolving offered. The colors moving just below the surface of her skin began a slow dance from light, pastel shades to darker hues.

  As he spoke, he worked at the controls. His eyes kept darting to the sensor picking up the signal from the orbiting space station. Another few seconds would bring the speedster back into range.

  He slammed his hand down hard on th
e sequencer again. This time the shift into hyperspace occurred instantaneously. Kinsolving’s stomach turned inside out and a kaleidoscope of colors danced before his eyes as the stardrive worked its mathematical magics on the curvature of four-space.

  The universe as he knew it vanished as light became too slow. His optic nerve refused to believe the lies this new universe told it. Kinsolving swayed dizzily, his ears roaring. A phantom song echoed through the din, more structured than electronic discharges from a gas giant planet but less ordered than true music.

  Fingers tingling and his stomach tied into acid-filled knots, Kinsolving fought to regain control of his senses. He held on to the sides of the couch for several minutes until his senses quieted and he could sit up without an attack of dizziness. The distant music faded to nothingness and his eyes again believed the world around him. Only the churning of his gut remained.

  “Lark?” he called. “Are you all right?” Kinsolving hadn’t given the woman a chance to secure herself before the shift; there hadn’t been any time left. The guard station had been preparing to turn this fine ship into molten aluminum and sublimated carbon.

  “Fine. I’m fine,” she said in a voice that betrayed that she wasn’t.

  Kinsolving swung out of the couch and paused for a moment to allow his legs to regain circulation. In the pseudogravity of hyperspace he could move about as easily as if he stood on the prison planet’s surface — but he was free! He had escaped the planet from which no one had ever escaped before!

  “Let me help you,” he offered. His hands went under her slender arms. He heaved Lark to her feet. The swirling subcutaneous dyes provided the only color in her face — and he did not like the dark grays and ebonies intermixing. “Are you sure you’re not hurt?” he repeated.

  “Photonic!” she said. The woman’s face began to glow with brighter greens and blues. When the decorative patterns turned crimson and silver he knew she meant what she said. “But I loved it in the acceleration couch.” Her arms locked around him like steel bands. She kissed him deeply and long. Kinsolving found himself not only liking it but responding with all the fervor of a man lost to his own kind for long months.

  “Um,” he said, finally breaking off. “Nice, yes, but I’ve got to figure out where we’re heading. It wouldn’t do to get too lost.”

  “Moira was lost for six years, but she didn’t have someone like you along to help pass the time.” Lark’s face radiated hot reds and purples that formed into tiny islands on her cheeks. Her arousal was obvious.

  “Being lost isn’t my intention,” he said. “This is a fabulous speedster. Did your father buy it for you?” Kinsolving couldn’t imagine the wealth that could purchase such an expensive ship for private use.

  “Oh, not exactly. His company owns it, actually, but they give him anything he wants. And he gives me anything I want.” She smiled and reached out, her fingers lightly caressing Kinsolving’s cheek. “But that’s boring. Where would you want to go?”

  Kinsolving hadn’t planned that far ahead. Only an hour earlier his plan had been to crawl up the side of a mountain, get above the ever present clouds and simply look at the nighttime sky to discover where the prison world might be in the cosmos. Escape hadn’t been a part of his expectations, not after the first few weeks on the planet.

  “Gamma Tertius 4, I suppose,” he said. Kinsolving wondered if appealing to Chairman Fremont, explaining to the ancient man what had happened, would help. He had no idea. But something more than Interstellar Materials’ headquarters lay on the desolate world. Kenneth Humbolt would be on GT 4. And perhaps Ala Markken would have been duty rotated there, also.

  Ala! A void formed in Kinsolving’s heart. How much of his woe had come from the woman? Much? Little? Had Humbolt lied to her, too, and caused her to betray her lover? Was this part of the Plan she had told him of when she’d been imprisoned by the Lorr?

  “Oh, tachyonic!” cried Lark. “I just love Gamma Tertius 4. The parties there are the best anywhere. IM knows how to make everyone feel so … good!”

  “You’ve been to GT 4?” he asked.

  “Many times. It’s in the ship’s nav-computer.” Lark frowned in thought. “But if we don’t know where we are now, that’s not going to help, is it?”

  “It might.” Kinsolving wasn’t adept at navigation. He knew so little beyond how to worry ore from reluctant rock that it bothered him now. His experiences had seemed broad until he had to face harsh reality. The toad being on the prison world had taught him more about survival than an upbringing on Earth had — and Kinsolving’s childhood hadn’t been easy.

  Kinsolving settled down and began working his way slowly across the panel, making certain he knew the function of every control. It proved easier than programming a robominer. The starship’s designer hadn’t wanted to force crew and passengers into any hard work, either physical or mental.

  “I have it,” Kinsolving said, leaning back and staring at the board. “We’re going to have to drop out to get a fix, but that shouldn’t be too hard to do.”

  “Do we have to do it right now? Those awful guards might be following us.” Lark pouted prettily.

  Kinsolving considered. It wasn’t likely that the prison world guards had followed. Only routine flights arrived and departed. Why try to trace the hypertrail of a starship? Kinsolving knew it was possible, but it required sophisticated equipment not likely to be in the guards’ arsenal. They orbited the planet and did little. Their poor work with the laser proved that, although Kinsolving knew that he’d been very, very lucky. Beam attenuation had robbed the laser of much of its destructive power.

  And he had launched the speedster before the atmospheric shield could be pulled away by the space station’s orbit.

  “They won’t track us,” he said.

  “Are you really a criminal?” Lark Versalles asked. Her eyes seemed to grow larger and shift colors. Kinsolving blinked, wondering if this were a trick of light or if the woman had surgically altered her eyes, too. Since she wore her expensive finery just beneath her skin, he couldn’t discount that possibility.

  “There’s no need to keep digging at it,” he said irritably. “I was convicted for something I didn’t do. The Lorr court system is different from Earth’s. I had no chance to present a defense. They seem to assume that any evidence given is evidence for conviction.”

  “So you’re not a dangerous man,” she said, lowering her eyelids and smiling slightly. “I’m just novaed at that.”

  “You don’t seem mad.”

  “Let me show you how not-mad I am.”

  “The ship. Gamma Tertius 4.”

  “All that will wait. Daddy gave me a ship capable of running without much attention. That’s a good thing, because my attention is usually elsewhere.” Lark turned and walked slowly from the cockpit, one hand resting lightly at the neckline of her shimmery, deceptively opaque blouse. Just as she disappeared through the hatchway, the blouse came free and drifted lightly to the control room floor. Barton Kinsolving bent and picked it up, his imagination running wild. He had been on the alien prison world for long, dangerous months. And he had been the only human. With the blouse in hand, Kinsolving left the cockpit and followed a trail of discarded clothing to Lark Versalles’ sumptuous cabin.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “I find this distasteful in the extreme,” Cameron said, nose wrinkling to emphasize his opinion. “Is there no other way to obtain the information?”

  “I don’t like dealing with Bizzies any more than you do,” snapped Kenneth Humbolt, “but this is an extraordinary circumstance.”

  “Hardly,” muttered Cameron. Louder, he said, “Think. These are the creatures who keep humans under their thumb. Such inefficiency they’ve shown! They cannot keep even a witless wretch like Barton Kinsolving imprisoned.”

  “Their vaunted prison world seems lacking, doesn’t it?” said Humbolt. Only the idea of the aliens’ vulnerability sparked a small hint of hope within him. Having to deal once more
with Cameron did little to heighten this, though. He did not like the fop, yet the man had his uses.

  Humbolt couldn’t keep his eyes from darting away from the elegantly dressed Cameron to the small robot hovering at his side. The repulsor field had been turned to low and emitted a barely audible hum, but the deadliness of this machine was apparent in its every line, its every angle. Twin sensors blinked a baleful red like a living predator’s eyes. The roving steel wire whips atop its head turned it into a large metallic insect; Humbolt had no idea what those sensors might detect — or if they were sensors.

  He shivered slightly at the idea of this robot hunter on his trail. He had seen what it did to the Lorr, but he hadn't witnessed how it had accomplished the dismemberment. Were those antennae heated wires that slashed through flesh? Or had Cameron done something even more diabolical with them? Humbolt’s mind ran wild, turning to electric whips and laser cutters and sonic disrupters.

  “Discover what the Bizzie knows and I will act upon it,” said Cameron. He reached into a brocaded vest pocket and withdrew a small gold box. With one finely manicured thumbnail he flicked open the box. Bending slightly, he put his nose near a tiny tube that had risen from inside. Cameron inhaled sharply and smiled.

  “What is that?” Humbolt asked. “I don’t want you drugged out of your senses. Kinsolving didn’t seem to be the kind to escape from that Bizzie prison, but he obviously did. He might be more dangerous than we think.”

  “Have no fear, Director Humbolt. This is an innocent enough habit. It contains only pure cerium.”

  “What?”

  Cameron smiled indulgently. “Cerium from your mines on Deepdig.”

  “You inhale pure rare earths? But those are metals. What — ”

  “It gives an ineffable response. You really must try it to understand.”

  “But it’s a metal!”

  “An expensive metal,” Cameron pointed out. “Perhaps that is part of its appeal. Not everyone can indulge a gram or two a day. Or perhaps it is the reaction when it reaches the mucous membrane. It dissolves violently in dilute acids.”